The use of categories - for example, dog, animal, chair, furniture - is central to human cognition, underpinning the ability to perceive, remember, and reason. Questions concerning when and how categorical representations emerge in infancy is therefore central to the study of perceptual and cognitive development. The aim of this project is to further our knowledge about the development of complex, perceptually-based categorical representations in young infants. The results will help us to understand how children learn, and should have relevance for issues concerning early childhood education, and developmental disabilities.
A series of experiments using the familiarization-novelty preference procedure will be conducted to study the categorical representations formed by infants at superordinate (e.g., animal, furniture), basic (e.g., dog, chair), and subordinate (e.g., German Shepherd, living room chair) levels across the first year of life. Specific experiments are planned to examine: (1) the ages at which infants first develop representations for superordinate, basic, and subordinate categories; (2) whether representations for superordinate categories precede those at the basic and subordinate levels; (3) whether methodological factors such as the number of exemplars presented to the infant underlie apparent differences in previous findings on the development of representations for superordinate and basic categories; and (4) what surface attributes of the stimuli (e.g., overall shape, particular parts, color, texture, etc.) infants extract when forming category representations at different levels.
